Research areas

Within Printed Electronics we study components and circuits that can be manufactured using printing techniques, such as screen printing, flexography, and inkjet printing. The goal is to enable reliable and cheap mass production of organic electronics, but also to provide a manufacturing process that is flexible and quickly adaptable, enabling a quick turnaround time for research experiments or customer-adapted products. Among the current research topics are functional interface materials for printed transistors, printed semiconducting particles, low-loss dielectric inks, printed wireless sensor circuits, and printed matrix-addressable displays.

Organic electronics differ from conventional electronic materials in that they conduct both electrons and ions, rather than just electrons. Another difference is in their chemical structure, which more closely resembles biological systems (proteins, polymers) than the rigid inorganic metals and silicon. For these reasons, organic electronics are increasingly being applied in biological settings. This new field of organic bioelectronics aims to leverage the ionic and electronic conduction for directly interfacing with cells and tissue, with the ultimate aim of fully incorporating organic “iontronic” circuitry within living animals. At the Laboratory of Organic Electronics, the bioelectronics group focuses specifically on (i) the development of self-regulated substance delivery systems (artificial neurons) for neuromodulation and sensing; (ii) applications in wound repair and pain alleviation; (iii) electroactive surfaces for cell and tissue release; and (iv) fully iontronic logic circuits for large-scale integrated bioelectronic systems.

Conducting polymers possess fascinating optical properties that are not only of great fundamental interest, but that can also be utilized in novel devices, such as new types of displays, light sources and solar cells. We address both of these aspects in the Organic Photonics and Nano-Optics group at LOE. In addition, we are interested in unique possibilities and applications enabled by combining conducting polymers with other photonics concepts. In particular, we explore hybrid concepts that merge organic electronics with functional nano-optics systems like plasmonic metal nanostructures.

Organic solids have a large variety of electrical behaviors. They can be metallic, semiconducting, ion conducting or insulating. We investigate electrical properties of those materials and their interplay with various other properties, e.g. heat transport, light absorption, ionic transport, ferroelectricity. We use those properties to create new concepts for electronic devices and demonstrate prototypes. Examples of devices under focus today are organic thermoelectric generators, photochromic diodes, electrochemical devices, electrolyte-gated organic field-effect transistors, polymer ferroelectric memories.

The research interest of the theory and modelling group are focused on electronic and transport properties of organic structures and devices for electronic and bioelectronic applications. We closely interact with experimental groups of the Laboratory of Organic Electronics providing theoretical support and modelling of ionic transport in electronic components and circuits based on organic electroactive materials, and performing multiscale modelling of electronic and thermoelectric transport in organic polymeric films. During past years our research activity has been also focused on investigation of electronic and transport properties of graphene, bilayer graphene nanoribbons with the emphasis on the role of defects and magnetic fields, effects of electron interaction, screening and spin.

While conventional electronics makes use mainly of top-down approaches to miniaturization, the introduction of molecular materials paves the way for a bottom-up approach to fabrication. The chemical versatility of molecular systems allows the incorporation – in a single material – of both electrical and chemical functionality (self-assembly) necessary for bottom-up electronics. The research of the Organic Nanoelectronics group focuses on the optoelectronic and transport properties of these nano-scaled organic semiconductors. Properties at such a small scale often give rise to unexpected emergent behaviors. Thus, we aim to experimentally investigate fundamental concepts that are attracting technological and scientific interest. This gives many opportunities to create and optimize device functionality for applications in transistors, electrochemical devices, non-volatile ferroelectric memories, and solar cells.